Meditations on the Legacy of Pope Benedict XVI

February 14, 2013

To the Editor:

The papacy is the world’s oldest dynasty, and that is its burden. Many have become accustomed to hearing popes as speaking not only for the Catholic Church but also for all humanity; in the past, those who listened to popes almost always belonged to his flock.

The last pope to resign, Gregory XII in 1415, did so when the papacy was at its lowest. Prelates were blinded by the pursuit of worldly power. Six centuries later, the church’s challenges are utterly different: a decline in churchgoing and religious vocations in the West, and the rise of Islam, especially in Europe.

The modern age, the age of Europe, is over — and probably many of the ideas of the so-called Enlightenment, too. A hardly conscious but deeply felt spiritual hunger remains. The cardinals who elect Benedict XVI’s successor must not be swayed by public opinion, or be tempted by what so many people see, often wrongly, as “progress.”

JOHN LUKACSPhoenixville, Pa., Feb. 12, 2013

The writer is the author, most recently, of “The Future of History.”

To the Editor:

Before his election to the papacy, Joseph Ratzinger was known as a gentle, intellectually gifted man who played piano and chatted with shopkeepers as he strolled to the Vatican. But as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he was the church’s fierce defender, holding an office that called on all his mettle. He requested quieter work as an archivist at 70, a request Pope John Paul II denied.

Watching that pope’s struggles with Parkinson’s could only have occasioned questions about the heroism of suffering and the sedulous demands of governance. At 85, Pope Benedict XVI must have looked back and seen how his happiest moments had little to do with power and everything to do with prayer.

A popular Latin instruction in the 16th century was “Memento Mori” (“Remember that you will die”). Acquiescence to that fact gives focus to our lives. There are those who, in the words of Dylan Thomas, “rage against the dying of the light,” and those who gracefully accept the limitations of age, subtracting distractions from their lives to become better acquainted with their future in God.

However unsupportable the actions of certain members of the Roman Curia during Pope Benedict XVI’s last year, his pontificate will undoubtedly prove as great a challenge to historians as it has to contemporary commentators.

A learned and perceptive theologian, Benedict in his three encyclicals somewhat unexpectedly emphasized the church’s social teaching, and though he did not have his predecessor’s political instincts, his greatest accomplishment may prove to be his willingness finally to address the pedophile scandal, and to do so with a directness that escaped all before him. Certainly, he assured the American church that he understood the gravity of what was at issue, and did so at a time when his still-reigning predecessor evidently did not.

A like integrity seems to have directed his present course. Although he was far from the first pope to resign his office, his candor, evident intelligence, choice of language and gentleness are uniquely his own, and may one day recommend both him and his papacy to posterity.

JOHN C. HIRSHWashington, Feb. 13, 2013

The writer is a professor of English and a medievalist at Georgetown University.

In addition to the items Father Martin correctly notes about Benedict XVI’s legacy, I would add that he has come to be known as the “Green Pope.”

In his encyclical “Caritas in Veritate” (“Charity in Truth”), in his 2010 World Day of Peace message (“If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation”) and in numerous other speeches, the pope has called on Catholics and people of good will to care for creation.

Even the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican now has solar panels on its roof. Surely this is a significant thread in Benedict’s teaching and practice that is very timely.

TOBIAS WINRIGHTSt. Louis, Feb. 12, 2013

The writer, an associate professor of theological ethics at Saint Louis University, is the editor of the book “Green Discipleship: Catholic Theological Ethics and the Environment.”

To the Editor:

In “The Humble Pope” (Op-Ed, nytimes.com, Feb. 12), Carol Zaleski says Pope Benedict sought “to carry on the version of feminism that one associates with John Paul II.” In other words, he was anti-feminist. And so it will continue.